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The South African Reserve Bank (SARB) is actively driving financial inclusion through its Vision 2025 programme. Its aim is to assist the national government in reaching a financial inclusion target of 90% by 2030, from 80% in 2018.
A major driving factor of this initiative is technological disruption in the payments industry. This disruption promises to expose new market opportunities for fintechs able to develop financial products and partnerships that benefit both merchants and customers.
Capitec Pay, driven by an Application Programming Interface (API) is one of these disruptions. It’s also the first payments API in South Africa.
APIs and TPPP systems
In essence, API solutions like Capitec Pay act as intermediaries between banking facilities and Third Party Payment Providers (TPPPs), where the TPPPs action a request and the API processes requests with the banking facility.
To put it in a transactional perspective, when a customer interacts with Ozow to make a payment request through Capitec Pay, we access the customer's bank account information through a highly secure API. This then relays the transaction to the merchant using the required banking details.
While this process might seem convoluted, all it requires is your mobile number, in conjunction with two-factor authentication. It’s not only safer and more secure, it’s also much faster. However, it doesn’t stop there. The Capitec Pay API also allows for:
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With these customer and merchant benefits in mind, Capitec Pay allows all Capitec users access to a more convenient way to transact through Ozow. Here’s how it works:
For the customer
Capitec Pay also provides the customer better control over the merchants they transact with, by allowing you to enable Capitec Pay for those merchants within the Capitec app. Capitec Pay takes extra precautions when you’re transacting with a merchant for the first time, notifying you of any suspicious activity and giving you better oversight of your finances.
This is incredibly useful for peace-of-mind and your ability to manage your finances. It’s ultimately an enhancement to an already secure payment system.
For the merchant
With Capitec Pay, Ozow merchants will experience guaranteed settlements (subject to the bank’s internal processes), adding to an expected uplift in completion rates. These settlements can also be monitored via a daily aggregation portal allowing your business better insights for future growth plans.
As a merchant, you’ll also receive enhanced security and fraud management with Capitec’s own fraud and security systems in conjunction with our own high security standards.
By collaborating with Capitec, and their API, Ozow gains the benefits of these services for both merchants and customers alike.
It’s the next step in the payment's revolution.
